Octavian Cantilli | The Grand Rapids PressHopcat owner Mark Sellers is planning to open two bars at 53 Commerce Ave. SW.The owner of downtown's bustling HopCat beer bar has a couple of new restaurant and bar concepts in the works that should help liven things up on Commerce Avenue SW this spring.

Mark Sellers recently purchased a former auto repair place at 53 Commerce Ave. SW with plans to open the two bars there by May.

He's keeping some of the more unique details close to his vest, but here's what he was willing to share so far:

Stella's Lounge (named for Sellers' two-year-old yellow lab) will feature a 1970s vibe with an entrance off the alley at the rear of the building facing Ionia Avenue SW.

The second bar, Viceroy, will have a more Art Deco aesthetic, face Commerce and feature work by Kendall College's Jeff Burtle, whom Sellers thinks is one of the city's great unknown talents.

Sellers said both places will embrace a mixed demographic, similar to HopCat. Neither will be a club or feature dancing or live music.

"Both of these concepts are going to be completely different from one another, unique in downtown Grand Rapids," he said. "They're taken from my experience living in Chicago and Boston."

Herm Baker, owner of Vertigo Music, 129 S. Division Ave., has been hired to develop the playlists for both bars.

"He knows more about music than anybody in Grand Rapids," Sellers said.

Mark Knauer, a Chicago-area architect who previously designed Bistro Bella Vita in Grand Rapids, has been hired to design the bars.

Like nearby Rockwell's and Republic, the bars will share a kitchen and bathrooms. Sellers said the bars will have completely different menus and atmospheres that will make them distinctly different places to grab some food and drinks.

"What I'm trying to do is give people a reason to come downtown, really appeal to people who don't come downtown often," he said.

Sellers said he does worry about over extending himself, especially since HopCat has been doing so well, but he's not worried about the downtown market being saturated.

His goal is to create more places, like he did with HopCat, where he would want to hang out. That formula seems to have worked out pretty well for him at HopCat, recently ranked as third best beer bar on the planet for the second straight year by BeerAdvocate Magazine.

"You get into problems when you try to build a bar that you think will appeal to other people but you, yourself, wouldn't hang out there," he said. "That's the majority of bars downtown -- you very rarely see the owners at their own bars. I could never start a dance club because I don't like going to those places. I could never start a country music bar, even though I don't anything against it, because I wouldn't hang out there."

Sellers said he'll end up investing more than $1 million to get the places up and running. The building is essentially a shell right now after a 2008 renovation gutted the space and prepared it to release or sell.

Sellers is bullish on the Commerce corridor thanks to 38 Commerce, the mixed-use project across the street which is nearing the final stages of construction, and Gallery on Fulton, which is set to open in September.